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Aron Ralston considers losing his arm the best thing that ever happened to him.

Now he can laugh at the “wheelbarrow joke” — and also feel grateful he’s still alive to hear it.

The Colorado adventurer has heard variations of the gag since 2003, when he cut his lower right arm off to free himself from an entrapping boulder in Utah’s remote Blue John Canyon.

His ultimately life-affirming ordeal is the subject of 127 Hours, a movie opening Friday that is fast gaining Oscar buzz. It’s a serious candidate not only for Best Picture honours, but also Best Director for Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and Best Actor (James Franco).

Franco plays the affable Ralston in the film, but the man himself is miraculously still here to wow people with his story. They include the curious driver of a taxi in Argentina and his companion, who recently did the wheelbarrow joke when they found out what happened to Ralston’s arm.

“We were in the middle of nowhere, in the desert, and the driver starts driving with his knees and put his hands down between his legs like he’s holding two melons down there,” Ralston said, laughing.

The other guy asked, “Where do you keep your wheelbarrow to carry around your balls? They must be so big!”

He appreciates the high praise, but the lanky and bearded Ralston, now 35, is far more modest about what happened to him.

“I’m humbled by it,” he said in an interview at TIFF 2010, following the world premiere of 127 Hours, which titles the sum of his five-day ordeal.

“I really appreciate what the film does. Danny’s driving motivation behind this is to make this superhuman act into a human-relatable experience, that any of us would do this.”

But how many would have his skill and presence of mind? Ralston was dehydrated and losing consciousness when he made his radical survival move to escape the rogue boulder that had trapped him in a narrow slot canyon.

He broke the bones in his lower right arm, between the wrist and elbow. Then he severed the skin and tendons using the dull blade of a cheap multi-tool, a grim task that took close to an hour.

They don’t teach things like this in engineering school, where he studied. But the Phi Beta Kappa grad from Carnegie Mellon University had the discipline and know-how to do what had to be done.

The alternative would have been certain death, and Ralston was still in grave danger. After freeing himself and administering first aid — he’s a trained wilderness rescuer — he had to rappel down a 20-metre wall, then hike for kilometres out of the canyon in the blazing sun, with no water or operating cell phone. He encountered a family of hikers from the Netherlands who gave him water and cookies before contacting a rescue helicopter.

It was actually Ralston’s second brush with death in a matter of months. Earlier in 2003, he was buried in an avalanche while skiing in the Colorado Rockies. Although covered in snow up to his neck, he managed to dig himself and a friend out.

The experience behind 127 Hours has given Ralston an amazing definition of “luck.”

He feels fortunate to have done what he did, because it gave him a renewed appreciation of life, family and friends. It also allowed him to become a father. He and his wife Jessica are the proud parents of Leo, who is now about nine months old.

Ralston is incredibly upbeat about the whole thing, and he’s flattered to be portrayed by rising star James Franco in the film.

Numerous surgeries were needed to close Ralston’s ragged wound, but he didn’t require much counseling. He has amazed other amputees with his can-do spirit and optimism.

“Getting out of the canyon — that was my therapy!” he said, laughing again.

“I was going to die. To cut my arm off to be free, it was all just gravy from that point. As I learned through my group sessions where I’d be with other recent amputees, I was the only one who saw my amputation as being a good thing.

“For me, it was like, ‘This was the greatest thing that ever happened to me!’ It changed my life; it changed my relationships with my family and my friends, and has led to my marriage and a baby. There have been lots of other opportunities, adventures and fun for my friends and my family as we get to participate in some of this craziness. It’s fun. I mean, it’s a ride!”

The adrenaline-addicted Ralston is still going on climbing and hiking adventures, including scaling peaks in Argentina, where he met the curious cabbies.

He also travels the world as a motivational speaker, where he reportedly gets between $25,000 and $37,000 (U.S.) a pop making people’s eyes pop open, as he talks on the theme of how he didn’t lose a hand, he regained his life.

Ralston has already figured out what he’s going to tell young Leo, whom he had a vision of while trapped in the canyon. He’s even considered how Leo will first ask him about it.

“I think it’s going to be when he first realizes that I don’t have a hand, and then he’s going to ask. I’ll tell him, ‘We go for hikes together, Leo, but I was on a hike by myself and I pulled a big rock down on my arm.’

“I’ve talked with kids — 4 and 5 years old — in school groups, in kindergarten groups, because they’re fascinated. They can see that something’s different there and some of them are very bold and right away want to come up and touch and others take a little longer to warm up.

“I think that as you engage with them and just be honest with them, they get it. What fear and anxiety that is initially there dissolves and then there’s just acceptance.”

As with all things since he freed himself from that rock, Ralston is happily anticipating that tell-all moment with Leo.

“I definitely look forward to sharing it with him, and maybe even getting out into the canyon with him. I hope that he’ll become an outdoorsman as well — or at least appreciate nature and have a respect for it.”

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